Leaving Normal

You know how in those wonderful noirish spy movies of the 40s, one spy hisses to the other: "Meet me at the newsstand. Wear a hat. And try and look normal."

It recently occurred to me that while this was probably life-saving advice for B-movie spies, it is really bad advice for us: we spend entirely too much time and energy trying to look normal. And I have come to realize that we are well beyond the point where we "pass." Even at four, Isaac is tall enough and mature enough that his language delays and some of his quirkier behaviors no longer blend in with his peers'. In fact, a former student of J's who saw Isaac at school this past summer asked point blank if he was autistic. J. was pretty thrown by this, until he discovered that the boy, a teenager, has an autistic sister. You see, we don't really look at things that way most of the time. Most of the time, we are in our world, where we understand and love each other, it all makes sense, and it's just so...normal.

But here it is. Hat or not, we no longer look normal to at least part of the outside world. It was clear at the museum yesterday, when Isaac refused to walk through the exhibits with us, insisting on endlessly riding the elevators. It was clear when he sank to the floor of the foyer, screaming (Oh the echo on those beautiful granite walls. I apologize if you were there, I really do). And it was clear when, cheered up and looking forward to snack, Isaac clearly requested a "badel and milt" (translation: "bagel and milk") from the cafeteria.

So yeah, we've left normal, and we're somewhere else now.

***
Yesterday I heard a snippet of a talk with Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor and specialist in language and cognition. The Q&A had just started, and someone in the audience, a high school student, actually, asked Pinker why words that begin with positive or neutral associations can come to accumulate such negative ones over time. They offered several examples, the most relevant being the slippery slope from "crippled" to "handicapped" to "disabled" to "differently abled" to...what exactly?

"Normal" and "typical," anyone?

And Pinker pointed out that people change these words in an effort to destigmatize the underlying conditions that they describe, but inevitably the stigma grows back, until the word is on a kind of a linguistic treadmill. And we are left with the blindingly obvious conclusion that we had better spend more time on erasing the stigma than changing the word. Why it took a Harvard professor to tell me that, I will never know.

***
A couple of weeks ago we were on a kindergarten tour, and I asked the guide what accommodations are made for kids with special needs (another bizarre euphemism, which I of course use constantly). And he seemed thrown by the question, and hemmed and hawed a bit, and finally said something to the effect that the school didn't divide kids into "smarter" and "slower" groups, but that they were very open to each child's learning style. But, he continued, the school was probably not the right place for, uh, handicapped kids. And the sad part was that he was trying, really trying, to be thoughtful, but he had no idea what to say.

Later in the tour, the head of admissions spoke, and she said that they were committed to serving a broad range of kids on the bell curve. To her credit, she even said that kids' bell curves could be different, depending on the academic area. [Good answer, thinks the mother greeted this morning both in Chinese and Japanese (Nihao! Konichiwa!) by her four-year-old.] But I had to remind myself that, unlike my jeans, not many bell curves are made with at least five percent Lycra.

And so I guess I am still struggling with this vision of what and who we are, and where we fit, and what it means. And yes, I admit it, I am a big noodler, and it's either my best quality or my most annoying one, depending on your perspective. But the most important part, the part I cannot yet answer, is how to let go--really let go--of normal.

Comments

[apostrophesuz]

Susan, this is just a great post. Have you read 'The Short Bus'? It talks a lot about what is 'normal'. And that normal is really everybody trying their very hardest to appear 'average' in order to fit in.

My son has a visible disability. But in our quest to have him included in his community (and this means have him act and appear as 'normal' as possible), how much of him, and his Aaron-ness and yes, his Down syndrome, am I trying to steal to make him conform?

[kristen]

Susan, this is a wonderful, thought-provoking post. I'm not sure you have to let go of normal, I'm of the mind that we are all--each and every one of us--not exactly normal, some of us just blend in better than others.

To a lesser degree we are experiencing some of those same "because of his height and his size" kind of situations. My son just turned six, but he looks like a mature seven. He doesn't, however, act like a mature seven or even a young six. So, yes, there are times--at school, in public--where the expectations based on how he looks are beyond what he is capable of meeting.

I don't know the answer. But maybe we can be the generation of change because I believe in my heart our kids (this group of 3 to 8 year olds) is just the tip of the iceberg.

[drama mama]

Trying to figure it out myself. We are on the edge- really and truly the edge, but boy, when her slip shows, it SHOWS.

And I have to reconcile myself to that.

BTW, what are you doing taking your kid to the museum? Expecting good behavior? His behavior seems TOTALLY normal to me!

[bonbonmomma]

Sometimes I think normal is over rated. Or perhaps I am trying to convince myself of that. I also think my perception of what is normal to 'other people' becomes more skewed as my son gets older. My concept of normal changes depending upon the situation as well. Our world is somewhat 'insulated' right now, but I know that when we head to district next year, 'normal' will definitley have a whole other identity.
It's really interesting to think about the evolution of words, and thank you for a very interesting post!